It’s safe to say that barring out first attempts and general encounter education, many wipes can be chalked up to a single individual. Now this isn’t always true but if you’ve been in any raid, 10-man or otherwise, chances are that you have had the group wipe at some point due to the actions of others. Sometimes crap happens. Tanks get crushed for whatever reason, people disconnect, but you can always pick out wipes that were caused by specific actions.

And the thing is, almost all of that can be avoided given that everyone is making sure they are personally responsible for themselves, as well as any other tasks assigned to you. So setting aside the videos and raid progression, let’s talk about how to be a responsible raider/group contributor.

First of all, you should read Megan’s post on Out of Mana entitled “The GCD as a Resource” because it is an excellent post. Some players may find that they are doing this already because it just makes sense. But it might be a foreign concept to others, flying right over their heads.

Personal responsibility comes long before the raid starts. Once again this is obvious to some. Flasks or Elixirs, Oils, food, scrolls, or whatever it is you happen to use. They should be in your bags before the raid starts. Be repaired and at the instance at your scheduled raid time (if it is scheduled). Few things are more annoying than sitting inside a raid instance with 8 people waiting for the other 17 to show up. Don’t expect a summon either. Make your way to the instance.

I know all of this so far is elementary, but face it, you know you’ve been in a situation where you want to start the raid and someone is in Orgrimmar still. Or they need a port because they forgot Flasks. It happens far too often for being so simple.

Let’s move on past the kid’s stuff on to taking care of yourself during the raid and encounters. Pardon the language but our raid leader’s favorite phrase is “Stop dying to stupid shit.” And any raid leader will say something along this lines as well. There are just certain things you should not have to worry about as a raid leader. And raid members dying to “random effect #4″ is one of them. These random effects start as early as Karazhan and don’t stop. Blizzard during Shade of Aran. Infernals during Prince Malchezaar. Cave-ins during Gruul. Fire Bombs during Halazzi. Tornados during Zul’jin. Spouts and whirlwinds during Lurker. Arcane Orbs during Void Reaver. I can make this list incredibly long but I figure you get the point.

And why should a raid leader have to tell you to jump in the water for Lurker’s Spout? At what point did people become unable to make their own decision? I see far too many people that develop tunnel vision while doing whatever their task is and then have to be told to do the most rudimentary things. The first step is to break out of that tunnel vision. Close your damage meters. Get rid of any on-screen distractions so the raid is your focus. I know a lot of people like to have a television on while raiding yet wonder why they died from Archimonde’s Doomfire. So many fights have recurring events that they can plan on avoiding, yet every single one needs to be called out. Sure, some people such as healers might need the warning, but the DPS should be perfectly capable of adjusting on their own, avoiding random effects as well as watching their own threat.

As far as Hunters go, these type of adaptations are the perfect time to accomplish a number of tasks, especially if you read the link to Megan’s blog regarding the GCD. For example, I use Doomfire adjustments to do many things. Refreshing Hunter’s Mark, re-applying Scorpid Sting, etc.

And there are so many things to help you with your effectiveness. Quartz Timers has a visual GCD indicator as well as an Auto Shot/Swing timer. BigWigs or Deadly Boss Mods will alert you to boss abilities, phase changes, etc. The excuse of “I didn’t know he was doing that” just doesn’t work.

Just imagine a raid where all the members were perfectly capable of adjusting without someone telling them to do so. We’ve all had good raids before (at least I hope we all have) where you thought to yourself “this is a good group.” Mages picked up stray mobs with Polymorph before anyone had to say anything. People focused fired targets solely by looking at what other people were doing. Good stuff just happened. I ran Zul’Aman last night with the intent of getting 3 chests. And we did, mainly because our members were on top of their game. For example, one person had a lag spike for just a moment during Akil’zon, and as fate would have it, the storm was put on him rather than the other 9 people standing on the tank. But without missing a beat, the whole raid adjusted quickly, no one took a single point of extra damage and we moved on to Nalorakk just a couple minutes later. It ended up being a great run with 3 timed chests (with tons of crap unless you were a caster/healer) culminating with a one-shot on Zul’jin. (Hex Lord gave me a Dagger of Bad Mojo. Woot, one more to go)

I am sure this post didn’t provide any ground-breaking information for most people, but I felt it was worth pointing out. Sometimes people just need a reminder. I challenge you, if you are not already doing so, to be the person who calls out incoming abilities for your raid. If that is not an option, be ahead of the curve and be prepared to adjust, change position, or whatever it is that will need to be done ahead of time.

That’s the post for today. Tonight we had back to Black Temple looking for our second Gurtogg Bloodboil kill and our first Reliquary of Souls kill. Also if you happened to watch any of the videos, let me know. It seems they generate the least amount of discussion and if they aren’t really interesting to people due to so many other options I can hold off on making them. As always, questions, comments, etc etc blah blah. Post ‘em here!

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About Drotara

Drotara (or BehemothDan) considers himself a geek on many levels. A web developer and programmer by trade, he has no shortage of geeky hobbies. When not fulfilling husband and daddy duties, he enjoys WoW, the WoW TCG, Magic: The Gathering, and great board games with friends and family.

3 Comments

In reality, it’s not even about memorization. It’s easy to remember a boss does random x ability, but just being able to adapt when you see something happening is the big thing. Not needing your hand to be held or having every minor detail explained goes a long way.